


Nascent Power

by manatee_patronus



Category: Ringu | The Ring - All Media Types, The Ring (2002)
Genre: Nensha, mild violence, projected thermography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7881544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manatee_patronus/pseuds/manatee_patronus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Samara experiments with her image-projecting powers and tries to impress Anna with them. Later, when she realizes that her cherished life with her mother might be at stake, she decides to use her powers to punish Richard, as she suspects that he is trying to get rid of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nascent Power

                My eyes were closed, my hand was pressed against the cardboard. I focused all of my mental power on peeling the picture from where it sat so tangibly on the surface of my brain and moving it, externalizing it.

                A flash of heat, radiating from the center of my palm. I opened my eyes.

                I had done it again! This was amazing. I had to show Mommy, she would be so proud of me.

                "Mommy!" Clutching the cardboard, I ran through the hallway of the farmhouse, past the bookshelves adorned with gleaming medals and pictures of horses, through the kitchen, to the hall outside my parents' bedroom, where I knew that Mommy would be getting ready.

                An oval mirror mounted on the wall, surrounded with a dark frame. My Mommy's lovely face coronated within it as she brushed her hair and applied makeup. This was but one of the many frequent images that populated my childhood, each polished and elevated through repetition to a strange symbolic significance that I did not yet understand.

                "Mommy!" I tugged on the sleeve of her vest. "Look, look at this! I can make pictures without drawing them!"

                "That's wonderful, hon." Mommy looked over, not at the cardboard slab I was showing her, but at me. She compulsively reached over, took a chunk of my hair, and tossed it over my shoulder. "Baby, you've got to braid your hair or something to keep it back. If we win at the show today, they're going to want pictures of the whole family and we want to see your pretty face!"

                I huffed. "But it takes forever to braid. Why can't we just cut it nice and short like yours? It's heavy and it pulls on my head. I get headaches sometimes."

                Mommy turned her face back to the mirror, now adding bobby pins to her hair so that loose strands wouldn't fall from her bun. "Because you have such lovely, thick hair - it would be a crime to chop it all off. I've always had thin hair and you know, when I was a little girl, I'd have given my right arm to have hair like yours." She darted a glittering smile at me and I couldn't help but feel proud.

                "But Mommy, seriously, look at this," My mind was back on the picture that she still hadn't looked at, so I lifted it up so that it was at the same level as the mirror and therefore easier for her to glance over at.

                Finally she did look over at it, and a small crease appeared between her brows. As she turned back to the mirror, she said, "That's a strange picture, Samara. Why did you draw that?"

                "I didn't draw it," I said immediately, and then looked down at the image again. It was a picture of a doll lying in a shaft in the ground, pierced by a rain of falling syringes. "It just showed up in my head. When it happens, I get this feeling that I can get rid of the picture if I only touch something, so then I touch something and concentrate, and there it goes." I tapped the cardboard to demonstrate.

                "I wonder if Doctor Grasnik will have anything to say about this in her report," Mommy mused fretfully.

                I felt disappointed. She was obviously not pleased with the picture. "I can make other pictures, too," I told her desperately. "I can make ones that I think up. Nice ones. Here, come with me and I can make you one of me and you and Daddy -" As I took her wrist in order to pull her toward my room, my palm - without warning - grew hot again and she lurched back with pain.

                "Ow!" she shrieked, dropping her brush and looking at a burn on her wrist. "Don't do that, Samara! Why do you twist?"

                "Twist?" I said, confused and upset. "I didn't! I just took your hand -"

                "You did twist, otherwise there wouldn't be a burn," Mommy said, still cross but not yelling anymore. She picked up her brush from the floor. "You've always done that," she continued in a calm voice, brushing the part of her hair that had sprung out of place when she jerked her hand. "Even when you were a baby. You would hold on too hard and then twist and burn. Except then, you only had itty bitty fingers - so you could only hold onto one of my fingers at a time, and sometimes I had little burns like rings on my fingers." She laughed fondly and kissed the top of my head. "You just have to be gentle, baby."

                "But did you see anything just then?" I asked. "When you were hurt?"

                "Just then?" she said distractedly. "No." Of course she didn't, I thought. I was distracted, thinking more about taking her to see the picture rather than the picture itself. "But back when you were a baby," she continued,  "Sometimes I would find myself thinking of sad things. I was still a little down from losing my last baby, and so I think it might have been that combined with the pain from the burns. But Doctor Grasnik gave me medicine and I was just right in no time."

                I started to speak, but at that moment, Daddy came charging out into the hallway from the bedroom, roughly, as he did everything.

                "What's the ruckus?" he asked brusquely. "Are you almost ready to go?" His eyes fell unkindly on me. "You, stop bothering your mother while she's getting ready, and I think I heard her ask you nicely to braid your hair."

                "But Daddy -"

                "But Daddy nothing. Just, 'Yes, sir,' and then get it done. You have five minutes."

                He stomped away to the barn to gather the supplies they would need for the show today. I seethed. He always got like this, particularly near show times. His head was so blown up with his own importance, with his obsession with the horses, that he had no time for me. I knew better than to waste my time trying to show him the pictures.

                "Why do we always have to go to horse shows?" I groaned. "They're so boring."

                Mommy chuckled and then started to braid just the front two chunks of my hair on either side of my face - she was going to pull them back and tie them at the back of my head. She said it made me look like a princess. "We've been doing the horse shows for a long time, baby. Even since before we found you! And you know, your daddy and I met at a horse race, back in..."

                She continued prattling on about meeting Daddy, but I didn't listen, and she didn't realize how her words had stung me. Even since before we found you! It felt to me at times that the horses got more love and attention because they had been here first. I'd always thought it was nice that I was adopted into a family without children, so I didn't have to feel like the "other," the "adopted child." But here I was, feeling that way nonetheless - second-place to the horses. Or third, really, after Daddy and then the horses. My heart clenched painfully.

***

                A few hours later, I was sitting in the dilapidated wooden stands that surrounded the field where the horses raced and performed other feats of agility and skill. It was a cool, gray day, and the sea breeze ruffled my hair and the sleeves of my dress. At the moment, no competitions were going on. Daddy was getting ready to perform with Arthur, one of their chestnut-colored horses.

                I sat beside Mommy, enjoying our time alone together. I snuggled up against her shoulder and talked to her about the book that she had allowed me to bring to entertain myself, Matilda by Roald Dahl.

                "...and then he put on the hat, and because of the super glue, they had to cut it off of his head!" I laughed. "I love how smart and strong she is - and how she uses her powers to teach people a lesson."

                Mommy nodded. "She is a clever little girl. When I was little, my older brothers used to tease me all the time, and I hated it. So one time," she leaned over confidentially,  "I put bleach in their Shampoo. It was hilarious. Their hair was all splotchy and blond in parts for at least a month. And the best part of all is that I didn't get in trouble."

                "Did they know it was you?" I asked.

                Mommy shook her head. "The Shampoo was new, so they ultimately thought it was something wrong with the Shampoo. They bought a different brand after that."

                I grinned delightedly, sharing in her little triumph. I didn't mention to Mommy the other reason why this book excited me: Matilda reminded me of myself, with her inexplicable, magical ability to move objects with her mind - as well as her inability to convince most of the grown-ups in her life that her power was real. While I couldn't move physical things, I knew that I could take pictures from my mind and put them on other objects, and I suspected - though I still had not determined yet for sure - that I could transfer the pictures from my mind to others' minds. This usually happened through touch, though there had been times when it had seemed to happen without any contact.

                "Mrs. Morgan?" I turned around and saw the mournful-looking old lady, Doctor Grasnik standing in the row above us. She must have walked over from another part of the stands because the section we were in had previously been empty apart from Mommy and me. She glanced down at me, gave a little wave, and greeted me in a kind but pitying voice. "Hi there, Samara. What are you reading?"

                I didn't like her. She treated me like a broken toy, like something that needed fixing, and I'd heard her say something to Daddy about referring me to a hospital on the mainland for long-term treatment...Would that mean I'd have to live there? Without Mommy? In any case, she gave me the shivers. "Hi," I said in my brightest, normal voice. I forced myself to smile at her. "I'm reading Matilda, Doctor Grasnik."

                "Very good, dear. It's always good to see children reading during the summer. You keep it up while I borrow your mother for a second."

                Mommy looked at her with concern, but Doctor Grasnik responded with a sharp look that I understood to mean, We must discuss this privately. Feeling anxious all of a sudden, I took Mommy's wrist as she made to stand up and whined, asking her not to leave.

                "I'll just be a minute, baby," she assured me. Doctor Grasnik waited and watched impassively as she sat back down for a moment and gave me a big, warm hug. "Here," she said, reaching around my shoulder to tap the book in my lap. "Read another chapter for me, and then tell me about it when I come back. OK?"

                "OK," I said, swallowing the tears that had started to pool at the corners of my eyes.

                She stood up and followed Grasnik a few rows up and several seats over. I tried my best to read the book at first, but I had to know what they were saying. I pulled the left side of my hair behind my ear, so that I could hear better. Luckily, the noises from the enclosure died down as many of the horses had cantered to the opposite side, so I was able to catch snippets of the conversation happening behind me.

                "...as I've told you, children can bear the effects of traumatic experiences that they are not even old enough to consciously remember..."

                "...mean the attempted drowning by the birth-mother?"

                "Yes. I think Samara might be suffering from an early onset of PTSD, and that's where the pictures are coming from. You see, people with PTSD often have sudden flashbacks, and without treatment, can constantly be immersed in the memory that caused the trauma - physically, it's almost like a deep rivet in the brain caused by the terror of the experience, which typically only extensive therapy can repair. Children with PTSD often negotiate those memories through drawing pictures. Many of Samara's pictures convey themes of water, claustrophobia, the sorts of emotions and images one might expect from a child who experienced a near-drowning."

                A horse passed directly in front of me and neighed loudly. Go away, horse, I thought irritably. Finally it cantered away, but I missed a few seconds of the conversation.

                "...would you recommend?" Mommy was saying.

                Doctor Grasnik lowered her voice. "...not well-equipped for these cases...Eola County Psychiatric has had more experience with children...long-term care...top-of-the-line, live-in patient facility..."

                "...oh I don't know...I don't know if I'd like Samara to be away from home..."

                "...might be good for both of you, since you've had a return of your earlier symptoms..."

                I'd heard enough. My heart pounded wildly and my stomach felt sick. I didn't know what to make of the mention of drowning. Had my real mother tried to drown me? Right now, the part of me that should have been horrified by that news felt numb. All that stuck with me at the moment was the idea that they wanted to take me away, they wanted to put me in a hospital, all alone and without Mommy. It was probably Daddy who had arranged it. The first I'd heard of this Eola County place was that day at the Doctor's office when he had talked to Doctor Grasnik about alternate options on the mainland. He was trying to get rid of me. He missed being alone with Mommy. Just him and Mommy and the horses. God, how I hated him. How I wished it could just be the honey-sweet moments of Mommy and me, reading quietly together at bedtime, she climbing into bed to snuggle with me until I fell asleep - Mommy and me at breakfast, making eggs together - Mommy and me, riding the horses and caring for them together. Because really, I had nothing against the horses. Just the fact that Daddy cared more about them than he did about me.

                But I wouldn't go, I wouldn't go to this Eola County Psychiatric. I'd talk to Mommy about it, make her see reason, and she said herself that she didn't want me to go. And if it came down to it, I'd use my powers, like Matilda - I'd show them that I didn't have this PTSD thing, I had something far more special. I'd show them things that would make them change their mind about sending me away. And then if that didn't work, I'd run away.

                But then I'd have to leave Mommy...

                "Hi, sweetheart, I'm back." Mommy retook her seat beside me and wrapped her arm around my stiff shoulders. I continued to stare straight ahead, distraught. "What's wrong, baby?"

                A shrill whistle sounded across the enclosure. It was time for the horses and their riders to trot around the enclosure, demonstrating the control of the rider and the obedience of the horse. Richard, astride Arthur, took his place in the lineup, on the far left side of the line, in the interior of the track. He was wearing his ridiculous horse-riding suit and he had composed his grouchy features into what he thought was a dignified, noble expression. I hated him so profoundly, I felt the hate pulse through me like boiling water.

                It was time to practice my powers, to see if I could convey images across longer distances. As the man with the whistle signaled the riders to begin trotting, I cast around for inspiration. What could I show Daddy that would ruin his performance? Maybe that wasn't the right way to go about it. He'd be too focused on winning, he wouldn't allow himself to be distracted. The horse itself would be a better target because its mind was not so complex. I would just have to frighten the horse; it would rear up and he would fall off. He'd have a bruised tail-bone for a few days. Serve him right.

                Now, what kind of image would frighten a horse? I looked around the enclosure, thinking...My eyes fell on my Mommy's hands, folded in her lap. The burn that I had caused earlier was just barely visible on the top of her wrist. That was it. Frighten the horse with an impression of burning.

                I gazed at Arthur as he cantered close by. Daddy bounced up and down slightly on top of him. I closed my eyes and imagined, as vividly as possible, the image of a fiery-hot brand, just a strip of metal - and this time, I added to the image the sensation of intense heat licking the skin as the brand approached, and then the sizzle as it made contact. I replayed the idea several times until I felt it bubble, tangibly, to the surface of my brain, ready to peel and transmit.

                I screwed up my face, allowing a curtain of hair to shield my gaze from Mommy, and focused all of my attention on Arthur and transmitting the idea of burning. My heartbeat sped up, I felt a ringing in my head, and at the last second, my palms grew hot once more.

                With a panicked neighing, Arthur reared up, just as I thought he would, first to one side and then to another. A satisfying spark of fear electrified Daddy's features as he gripped Arthur's reins. The crowd gasped and murmured all at once. Mommy stood up and took hold of the railing in front of us, trying to decide whether to descend to the field or not. The third time that Arthur reared, he jerked convulsively in such a way that he overbalanced, and he fell on his back, Daddy beneath him.

                The whistle-blower called a halt to the competition and Mommy raced onto the field. I rubbed my aching head and followed after her, more slowly. She extricated Daddy from beneath Arthur, and then, together, they were able to lift Arthur back onto his feet. The horse was visibly trembling, straining at his reins, trying to get away. From me. His huge black eyes looked at me with a fear that probably only I noticed, in all of the commotion. Underneath the visceral feeling of triumph that I had gotten my powers to work on command, I felt guilt for having frightened Arthur.

                "Richard, are you hurt?" Mommy asked Daddy anxiously. He limped a step but shook his head stubbornly, his face pulled in a grimace.

                As we left the show later, Mommy and Daddy silent and brooding in the front seat, I did not feel quite happy, but satisfied. I still didn't know what would happen, but what I did know for sure was that I was well-prepared to put up a fight if Daddy tried to take me away from Mommy and lock me up somewhere. After the events of the afternoon, my thighs were red and burnt where I had clenched them while concentrating on transmitting the image to Arthur, and my whole body felt as though it were pulsating with nascent power.


End file.
